


Falling and Flying

by Pichitinha



Category: Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-29
Updated: 2015-07-29
Packaged: 2018-04-11 22:12:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4454297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pichitinha/pseuds/Pichitinha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dick's life can be split in two kinds of moments: those when he flies and those when he falls.<br/>“Sometimes you wake up. Sometimes the fall kills you. And sometimes, when you fall, you fly.” ― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Falling and Flying

**Author's Note:**

> I know how Dick moves from Robin to Nightwing in the comics and all, but this is a take on the matter based on the sentence. If you're confused with the ending (about the hero mentioned) you should look up on where Dick got the name Nightwing. Also, the final sentence represents his thoughts, how he feels on the matter. Hope you like it.

Sometimes Dick wakes up startled, his heart racing and stuck on his throat. When this happens, he knows he’d been having a nightmare and was about to get a panic attack; but thanks to Bruce’s help over the years, he always wakes before it happens.  
  
He never remembers what he’s been dreaming, though. Sometimes he can  _feel_  it, what he was feeling in the dream, and it lingers on him the whole morning. The sadness, anger, dread, guilt, sorrow. Sometimes it’s a good feeling, but more often than not it isn’t.  
  
Every time it happens, though, Dick’s mind has an escape route. He’s immediately reminded of a time years and years ago, when he was just a circus kid desperate to fly like his parents. He always remembers one particular night, when he was five. He had trained all day and he was sore everywhere for jumping, leaping, turning and falling. That night, when he slept, he dreamt of training and of falling and at some point there was no net to catch him but no floor either, just an endless pit with no bottom.  
  
He had woken up gasping, screaming even, and his mother had been by his side in a second. She had held him and cradled him until he slept again, safe in her arms all night.  
  
His mind remembers this night over and over again, and despite what he had dreamed and what feeling he has, he always feels his mother arms around him too.  
  
Sometimes, he wakes up.  
  
*  
  
All things considered, Dick thinks he did a great job at moving on. He’ll always miss his parents and his family and the life he had at the circus, but he learned to find happiness despite all of his losses and he is truly content right now.  
  
Still, there are some nights when everything is too quiet and too big and too dark that he can’t help it but to think of the past. He loves his life, loves what he achieved, but when there seems to be nothing to fill his mind, his heart longs for what is long gone. He remembers his mother perfume and his father comforting presence and how much he’s lost. If he hadn’t  _lost_  it he wouldn’t have to get a new life.  
  
Would he be happier?  
  
That thought alone is enough to keep him awake. He wouldn’t have met any of the people he knows now. Could he be happy without them? The answer is probably yes, because he’s happy without his parents. He can’t picture it, not knowing anyone, not being a superhero, not being Bruce Wayne ward; but he had never pictured being without his parents either and he managed.  
  
And that scares him, the fact that he probably could live without all of these people. Who’s to say he’s not gonna lose them too?  
  
All these feelings creep into his dreams on those cold nights and even though it happens rarely, he dreads it the most.  
  
He dreams of  _that_  night when it happens.  
  
He sees them falling, one by one. It’s not a memory, because his mind plays tricks with him. His mother is the first to fall and the safety net is there, but she passes right through it. His father is next and the net disappears when he’s about to hit it. His uncle and cousin go then, willingly jumping to their imminent death. And there’s blood, lots and lots of blood.  
  
And the final catch is that he goes too. He reaches to them, desperate, and suddenly he loses his balance – something that would  _never_  happen in real life – and he’s falling too.  
  
Sometimes, he doesn’t wake up.  
  
*  
  
He stares at their picture on his nightstand. It’s an old newspaper photograph that Bruce found a while ago. He kept it for three days before giving it to Dick, what at the time started a fight that lasted more than a week between the two of them.  
  
That had been the last real fight they had before the current one. Still, this is the biggest one yet.  
  
He doesn’t know who’s right or who should cave in, he only knows that he’s angry and sad and betrayed and for the first time he wishes Bruce hadn’t taken him in.  
  
It’s petty and ridiculous because it’s not true, but that’s the last thing he screamed at his legal guardian before locking himself in his room.  
  
His mother’s eyes seem to be piercing him from the picture by his bed. He remembers idly how she always knew what to say to him when he was upset.  
  
He was her little Robin and keeping the name when he joined Batman was his anchor. It connected him to what he  _was_ , to what he had lost and what he had gained. His parent’s approval of his new style of life had always lingered on his skin when he wore the costume, when he wore the  _name_.  
  
And now it doesn’t feel like that. It feels like he had sold out Robin to Batman, it’s not his anymore. It feels like he sold out his  _life_  with it.  
  
His heart aches at that thought, as he looks at the picture and can’t see himself as the little boy represented in it anymore.  
  
He sleeps with a clouded mind and dreams of non logical scenarios in which he can’t say if everyone has abandoned him or if  _he_  is the abandoner. He dreams of his days in the circus, of flying and of falling. He dreams of his parents and he dreams of Bruce.  
  
And he dreams of a hero he knew not so long ago. A hero that could fly, but whose planet had fallen.  
  
And that day when he wakes up, he’s not falling. He’s flying.  
  
He’s Nightwing. 


End file.
